Within the Walls
by Mrs.GingerHinkley
Summary: "She is the one who binds herself, twisting her shackles in her ire, falling to the ground in a crumpled heap of the woman she was when she first arrived. I only witness." -Azkaban reflects on its most infamous prisoner.


Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Harry Potter series.

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I have held many a great witch and wizard.

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She deserves me most of all. And at first she doesn't protest me. Bellatrix Lestrange walks into my open arms like a triumphant child, laughing, taunting, and not about to be told she is wrong. And I embrace her with eagerness to parallel her own, because this new woman fascinates me. In her seduction of and by the dark, she is raving and beautiful when first she enters my cold castle. Not often does a woman promise me with the rest of her life spent in my care, but Bella has received such a sentence from the Ministry. It is a title for which she prides herself and swears it speaks volumes of her loyalty. My Bella possesses a loyalty which startles me into realization. Bellatrix Lestrange is not my prisoner, I am hers.

This is how it seems to me for quite some time. For Bella takes longer than most to break. Some snide, miscalculating, Ministry officials speculate that Bellatrix Lestrange is already broken when she enters my realm, demanding and enjoying to be branded with the numbers of her place within me. Bellatrix struts to the highest region of my labyrinth, and I keep her well where only the society's most heartless dare reside.

But unlike her fellow life-sentenced, Bella has a heart. I know this. It beats in syncopation with my own. And the pounding of her throbbing heart rings so loudly that she sometimes overpowers the crashing waves of the North Sea, and I can concentrate only on this passionate creature within my walls. The days of the first year pass, and with that time, some say, her fiercely aristocratic looks.

I disagree.

Bella's time with me draws her into sharper focus. With her cheeks hollowed and eyes widened, Bellatrix's deepest longings radiate in a dull glow against her skin. And what does she care if her hair loses luster and will become as tangled as her mind? She still has the dark image of purpose imprinted in her forearm. And for now, for always, for Bellatrix, that will be enough.

But Bella's Dark Mark fades sooner than the numbers on her neck ever will. Suddenly, time begins and ends for Bellatrix. The nothingness of her left forearm drives Bellatrix to thoughts of nothingness. She neglects my presence and travels deeper into her mind, because she knows she will find _him_ there.

Her true prison keeper.

Of course, Bellatrix sees him not in this harsh, honest light. Bellatrix has always had an affinity for prisons. I know this well enough. But she is not prepared to stay with me if the prison she longs for the most is vanishing somewhere in the shadows of a reconstructing world.

Somewhere, she knows, she thinks, she hopes, he needs her. And after the echoes of her Wizengamot boasts silence, Bella must face the reality. Her master is not merely hiding; he is hurt and will perhaps not return.

She is tortured with the realization. I am not the prison. The reality of possibility is the prison. For as the ink upon her skin fades, so too does Bellatrix fade.

Bella does not fade like so many of my others, however. Bellatrix fades with the burning recklessness of a falling star, speeding toward the ground with revel.

But the dementors get her. Just when she thinks she will hit my hard stone floor and crack completely, they begin to feast on her wounded but still fighting body.

They whisper nightmares, realities, passions, pasts that have happened to her. The aching soul of these memories is not why I now cradle the great Bellatrix Lestrange. The aching soul of these memories is how the great Bella Black came to need cradling. I know these memories only by a broken name, a name she sometimes sobs in her fear-induced sleep, screams in her fear-induced insanity.

"Meda," she calls.

"Meda," she claws at my sides, begging me to release her, or to hold her so tightly to end her.

But Bella only dares to breathe these two syllables when she is too weakened by the dementor's looming kisses to control herself.

There is another name, too.

"Cissy," she weeps.

"Cissy," she begs as she keeps my cold wall against her cheek.

I have had years to know the fragile, fine tunings of my female warrior. So I know that next she will abandon my side, her salty tears seeping within my own sea-stained crevices. Bella stands, as she always will, and latches her fingers around my bars, and shakes me with her screams of fury and her violent thrashing. Sometimes she doesn't understand that I'm only trying to protect her. Protect her, for if she could witness the changing world outside myself, surely she would go mad.

But Bella, so longing to defend, protect, to kill, caress, to claw, spite, to love, slave, to hate, hurt, to punish, please, to torture, forget, to remember all in the name of her noble and most ancient family, cannot stand for long. She overwhelms herself and thinks I am keeping her from all of her duties.

I am not.

She is the one who binds herself, twisting her shackles in her ire, falling to the ground in a crumpled heap of the woman she was when she first arrived.

I only witness.

Bellatrix calms herself only when she clutches her left forearm. Kisses the pale expanse of skin. Begs her master to return. If not for her, for their world.

Selfishness is not Bella's crime. She'll wait for her rescue. She only wants a sign that her waiting isn't in vain.

To her forearm:

"My lord," she says.

"_My lord_," she prays.

And though there is no answer but the pulsing pure blood under the skin of her vanished Dark Mark, she's alive, and he must be alive. Bellatrix has waited for fourteen some years.

"I'll wait fourteen more," she tells me before her breathing evens to a sustainable rate.

That, at least, I cannot keep her from doing. Waiting. Perfecting her loyalty.

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**Author's Note:** Originally, I intended to write a five part series examining Azkaban's opinions on the likes of Bellatrix, Lucius, Barty Crouch Jr., Hagrid, and Rodolphus. We'll see if we ever get past Bellatrix. I live for the thoughts of readers.


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